DENMARK – Our team of Daniel Kemp (skipper), Isabella Holdsworth, Hayley Fisher, Louis Tilly, and Lachlan Wallace claimed the silver medal for Australia at the 2026 World Sailing Youth Match Racing World Championship, held from 21 to 25 June 2026 in Middelfart. As a result, Daniel and the team are now ranked 1st in the Youth Match Racing World Rankings. In this piece, Daniel and the team share some reflections and insights on the campaign:
Having won the youth national match-racing championship in Hobart last October, we knew we had secured selection for the 2026 Youth Worlds. After a disappointing finish to last year’s Worlds in Gdynia, Poland, we knew that we needed to train hard and compete widely this past summer in the lead-up to the Worlds. After confidence-boosting podium finishes at the 2026 Hardy Cup and 2026 Toyota Cup in Auckland, our training program increased significantly with the start of this year’s Youth Development program in early May under the guidance of RPAYC Head Coach Rob Brewer.
We arrived in Denmark on 17 June, spending two days in Copenhagen with the team from New Zealand before making the trip west to Middelfart, a small town on the Little Belt, the smallest of the three Danish straits that drain the Baltic Sea.
The regatta was to be sailed on Blu26 yachts, high-powered symmetrical-spinnaker sportboats used primarily for lake sailing in Switzerland. The fleet of boats was owned by the organising authority, GoSail Denmark, which together with the local municipality had just finished building extensive facilities and infrastructure around Middelfart Marina.
When we arrived in Middelfart, we met the rest of the competition – for this year’s Worlds, there were 12 teams from 11 countries (with two entries given to the host nation). It also became apparent once we arrived that the regatta would mainly be light winds. With a persistent high-pressure system sitting over Europe, the “Danish heatwave” meant that each day temperatures exceeded 30 degrees, and the highest wind speeds we raced in throughout the event were 10–12 knots.
After the training day on 21 June, in which we had two hours to learn and adjust to the boats, racing commenced. The first day of round robin racing was a marathon. In scorching conditions, the race committee completed 16 flights of racing, concluding at 8.30pm. We finished the day on seven wins and one loss, having lost an early match to the local team led by skipper Matias Rossing.
We continued round-robin racing the following day, with three flights remaining against the higher-ranking teams in the fleet. We won two and lost one, ending the round robin with a scorecard of nine wins and two losses. With this result, we won the qualifying stage of the regatta and also won the Gérard Bosse Memorial Trophy. Gérard was a French International Umpire and prominent figure in the Fédération Française de Voile. He was passionate about youth match racing and umpiring, which saw him officiate at all the biggest international competitions, including the Olympics and the America’s Cup. He passed away in 2022. It was an honour to win the trophy named after Gérard.
With our round robin result, we were able to pick our opponent for the quarter finals. Having picked the Danish team led by Victor Melchoir (world no. 21), we were happy to progress to the semi-finals, winning the series 3–0.
We were then grateful to have a break out of the sun as the other sets of quarter-finals concluded. We chose to race another Danish team (Rossing, world no. 13) in the semi-finals beginning on the afternoon of 24 June. Racing in sweltering conditions with a shifty breeze made for some incredibly exciting racing in the two flights that afternoon. In the last race of the day, we received a pre-start penalty, which we offset metres from the finish line with a big luff on the Danish team.
Going into the final day of racing, we were leading our semi-final 2–0 and were happy to win the first match of the day, progressing to the finals 3–0.
In the finals, we were to race the USA team, steered by Morgan Pinckney (world no. 9). In the first race, we took the win by a comfortable margin; however, Morgan and his team staged a good fightback to win the next two races. In the fourth race of the finals, we again used our good speed and boat handling to bring the scorecard to 2–2 and force a deciding match.
At the pre-start of the fifth match, preferring the right-hand side of the track, we decided to start to windward of Morgan; however, in a big luff, he shut us out of the start line, resulting in contact between our boat and the committee boat and a penalty. After this far-from-ideal start, we were about ten lengths behind the USA and a penalty down; however, relying on our speed and a sequence of very good shifts, we overtook Morgan at the first windward mark and then offset our penalty on the second beat. In the process of taking our penalty turn, Morgan again gained the advantage and held on to his lead on the final downwind, winning the race by four seconds. Despite the disappointing finish to the regatta, we are incredibly proud of the way we sailed throughout the week and to have finished with the silver medal at the world championship, the culmination of several years of training and competing as a team.
Congratulations to Morgan and his team – they sailed an outstanding regatta. Getting to Denmark was not an inexpensive endeavour, and to this end we are incredibly grateful to RPAYC and the Youth Development program as well as our team sponsors, Vaikobi and Red Pumps Concreting. The next regatta for the team will be the 59th Governor’s Cup at Balboa Yacht Club in Newport Beach from 27 July to 1 August 2026. It’s been a long campaign, and we’re excited to carry this momentum forward into the next chapter of our season.
